NYSE to hold ‘dry run’ for Twitter IPO

The Big Board said Friday it would allow trading firms to conduct a dry run of their systems to prepare for Twitter’s IPO. The exchange seems to want to avoid the technical problems that marred Facebook’s debut on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in May 2012. The glitches were a major embarrassment for Nasdaq, and resulted in a big fine.

The NYSE test will occur on Saturday, Oct. 26, according to a notice sent out to traders.

Twitter said earlier this week that it had chosen to list with the NYSE over rival Nasdaq. The micro-blogging service is expected to go public sometime in November, possibly before Thanksgiving.

Twitter’s IPO is the biggest social media debut since Facebook’s. While Nasdaq won Facebook’s listing, one of the biggest IPOs in years, the debut was hit with trading delays and order failures. As a result, the Securities and Exchange Commission in May fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest ever levied against an exchange.